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My Gardening Buddy

Tis the season for breaking out that shovel and getting your hands in the soil to plant the new seeds for that spring garden. My husband and I have been rather busy putting ours together. We planned on doing small things but that had quickly climbed to 3 raised beds, 9 tomato plants (6 normal and 3 cherry), 14 potatoes planted, 4 trees (2 breeds of avocados, a lemon, and a clementine), 6 basil plants, 6 batches of strawberries, kale, spinach, carrots, rosemary, zucchini and enough onions to make any one cry. The crazy part is – we aren’t done! We are still going to peppers, more herbs, cantaloupe, watermelon, and even black beans. (Deep breath in!)

How am I going to take care of all this? I know I am in way over my head but I love it! It gives me something to do to provide for my family all year round and I bought my hubby a dehydrator for his birthday so now we can so even more! But I am not doing this all on my own of course. I have my husband’s help but, most of all, I have Emma! And she is a great help! Sometimes it’s not in the way I would want but she is there none the less and this is my chance to teach her something that she won’t learn in school.

She will get to learn where her food comes from and how hard it is to actually get it. That it takes time and a lot of work just to get one plant to grow. She will learn responsibility (which is dying fast in our young people today) and how to take care of something other than herself. She will learn about death and how not all plants make it, but there’s where learning from mistakes and problem solving come in. She will learn how to fix something to make it better.

All of these things she should be learning at school but she won’t. I know I didn’t. I didn’t learn anything about responsibility from public school. I learned that all from home. I was a nine year old out riding on the trails by my house with my own horse (of which I started providing everything for by age 14) with no one. How? I knew how to take care of myself and what to do in case of an emergency. We still didn’t have cell phones at that time. I am actually happy to say that I can remember a time when people weren’t strapped to the little device. So my mom would drop me off, I would go ride and then return at the allotted time planned. Because I was taught all the lessons above at a young age, I was able to do so much more. It came with more responsibility but my childhood was something that most little girls only dream about.

I just didn’t have one horse, I, at one time, owned five. I trained one colt and brought another home. He bonded with my mom and now he is ten and is her trail horse. I got to do 4-H and dominate in my class, I got to go to AWANA a earn my Citation Award, I have 300 Endurance Riding Miles under my belt and countless other Horse Show ribbons in a box in storage. This isn’t to gloat but rather to show what some training about the simple things life can do. Where someone can go if they are given the right tools.

I want to equip my daughter to be successful. I want her to grow up and be her own person and to do the things that she wants to do. It doesn’t have to be horses. My sister is 22 and has a thriving business as a hair designer called Beauty Designs by Audrey. She graduated high school with her first salon station and ready to start her career. My parents have a successful body work called Bowenology. My husband does Youtube videos now with his most popular one about Everydollar.com. What do these things all have in common? We are old fashion people who know that value of hard work, and the start of that for my daughter is going to be this garden.

So she is my gardening buddy and I can’t wait to show how to dig her first hole 🙂